THE NBA / MARK HEISLER : After the Weekend, Run for the Border

Memories of the Endless Weekend keep flooding back:

Mike Hoban, the 16-year-old with a chance to win $1 million, shooting an air ball.

The Mavericks’ Tony Dumas missing all three of his tries in the dunk contest and scoring 15 points, suggesting a dead man could get 15 points.

Charles Barkley’s, uh, spirited response after an ESPN microphone caught him saying, “I hate white people.”

Said Barkley at Sunday’s post-game news conference: “First of all, I hear ESPN is trying to . . . me and you guys are trying to make it into a controversy. I was joking with one of my friends. If you don’t like it . . . you and your families.”

They don’t make apologies the way they used to. However, after a slow weekend in the Valley of the Sun, followed by an actual All-Star game so lame it made the dunk competition look good in retrospect, who was going to tell the Chuckster to chill and what good was it going to do anyway?

Barkley made his comment about white people on All-Star Saturday, interrupting one of his diatribes about the press, which he has recently accused of torturing such figures as Mike Tyson, O.J. Simpson and Vern Maxwell. Barkley, a bull in the China shop of race relations, frequently makes ethnic jokes, and several white reporters in attendance when he said it thought nothing of it.

“That comment was made in jest,” Barkley said before the game, genial as usual. “You see why I hate the press?”

The whole weekend seemed to be a setup for Barkley to get a farewell All-Star MVP in what may be his final season, and for actor Bill Murray, star of the NBA’s promotional commercials, to finally find his court. In keeping with the event’s motif, neither happened.

NBA officials seemed to be preparing the world for a Murray appearance. Murray was in town. Commissioner David Stern said that security had been alerted to keep him off the court. The commercials were run on the stadium TV screens all through the game.

But Murray never showed. Perhaps the NBA was afraid of being compared to professional wrestling. After Sunday’s yawner, however, the actor would have been welcome--if he had brought Hulk Hogan and Rowdy Roddy Piper.

In the age of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, All-Stars actually acted as if they cared about winning, mostly because it was important to the two super-competitors to win at everything and to let their friends on the other squad hear about it. The passing of the twin legends and Michael Jordan, too, reduces this event to a boring rite of mid-season before a crowd as quiet as overstuffed guests after Thanksgiving dinner.

Phoenix Coach Paul Westphal has complained that the local fat cats who can afford Suns’ prices aren’t loud enough, and this group was even fatter. The locals couldn’t cheer their heads off for Barkley and Dan Majerle; of 15,000 season-ticket holders, only 7,000 got in. The rest of the seats went to “sponsors and licensees”--businessmen on a weekend junket to play a few rounds of golf and take in the game.

The game was so dispirited, no one could even muster the effort to get the ball to Barkley so he could score the necessary 20 points and win the MVP. Charles had 10 by halftime, but took only four shots in the second half.

“I was lucky and blessed to get the (all-star) MVP one time,” he said later, laughing. “If I got it again, it would just clutter up my house. I already got enough stuff.”

So the weekend droned to an end, just in the nick of time.

“It’s been a long weekend for the Chuckster,” said Barkley, trotting out his pet nickname for himself.

“I’ve been trying to be a good host. Everybody’s been trying to be good hosts, but we’re getting tired of you. We need our golf courses back. We need our restaurants back.”

He held up a cup of beer.

“This is for y’all. Get the hell out of town, now.”

When he’s right, he’s right. My family’s outta here.